


Suburban Warfare

by monobuu, tisfan



Series: Tony Stark Bingo [20]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Don't Try This At Home, M/M, Robots, Suburbia, flamingoes, suburban warfare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 20:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17669516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monobuu/pseuds/monobuu, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: When the HOA makes his neighbor take down his adorable little garden gnomes, Tony sets out a plan of revenge, involving flying… robotic… flamingoes. Who said suburban living was boring?For Tony Stark Bingo fill S1 - Mutual Appreciation Society (tisfan)For Tony Stark Bingo fill S3 - Day in the Life (monobuu)





	Suburban Warfare

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh... this happened.
> 
> Lemme explain; I was talking with the other mods about what was and was not allowed as fills and using ridiculous examples because I didn't want anyone to think I was specifically talking about them (or a specific fic or whatever) since I wasn't...
> 
> And Nix piped up "so, uh, what's this flamingo AU"  
> annnnd this happened.

Tony Stark hadn’t actually seen his neighbor for the first six months or so after moving into Lighthouse Crossings. 

Tony’s house was the one on the end, so he only shared the one wall with his neighbor -- Mr. Banner, according to the package that Tony had once gotten by accident. He’d dropped it off at Banner’s porch and rang the bell, but got no answer. So, Tony had left the box there and hoped that the stories about being able to leave your front door unlocked were true.

Rhodey kept saying that living out in the middle of nowhere was going to be good for Tony, but Tony wasn’t so sure. However, with steady access to Amazon Prime and a really nicely remodeled shop in what had once been a double garage, Tony was managing. Mostly.

He hadn’t seen his neighbor, that much was true, although sometimes Tony could hear him moving around in his own house. He drove an enormous, bright green Jeep that was usually parked in the drive, same as Tony’s Audi.

Tony wondered what Banner was keeping in his garage, since it wasn’t his car. It wasn’t that unusual, though. He’d noticed of his up and down the street neighbors, that only about ten percent of them used the garage for actual car storage.

So, he’d never actually seen his neighbor.

But what he had seen was his neighbor’s lawn ornaments.

It started as just one; a little garden gnome wearing a pointy hat, and -- Tony actually had to walk up Banner’s driveway to peer at it more closely -- a Star Trek uniform.

“Beam me up, Scotty,” Tony said, patting his neighbor’s wall. “You are my new best friend, if I ever meet you.”

A few weeks later, the Star Trek redshirt gnome was joined by two science officers.

A week after that, Tony noticed that there were now four gnomes, and they’d been redistributed so that Red Shirt Gnome was dead, there was a science officer inspecting the dead gnome, and a yellow shirted gnome screaming at the skies.

“Khaaaaan!” Tony muttered.

A week after that, a communications officer gnome sat on the front porch, delicate little porcelain legs crossed as she talked into a device attached to her head.

A month or so and Tony found a shop in town (he walked by it all the time on the way to the hardware store, but this time he’d actually stopped in and looked.) that sold lawn ornaments. He looked over the stock and picked out a good sized lawn crocodile, which he added to his own lawn, only inches away from Banner’s lawn.

Two days later, he was delighted to go out in the morning and discover that the entire Gnome-Away team was gathered on the edge of Banner’s yard, inspecting the croc.

A day after that, the croc “ate” one of the Away Team.

It progressed like that.

Tony still hadn’t met the neighbor. But he was nursing just a little bit of a lawn decoration crush.

***

Dear Mr. Stark,

It has come to our attention that you are in violation of Community Guideline 102.a.ii, specifically:

_ It is the duty of all members of the community to keep their lawns neat and tidy, so as not to lower curb appeal for the neighborhood. _

The board is giving you ten (10) business days to comply without our requests, or the board will have the lawn tidied, and bill you for any corrections.

Further non-compliance will be met with a $25-per-day fee after the specified ten (10) business days are up to be collected with your monthly Home Owners Association Fees. 

If you would like to appeal this decision, the board will hear your complaints on the second Tuesday of the month, at our bi-monthly meeting.

Sincerely

Whitney Frost

***

The first time Tony met his neighbor, a man with an unbelievable amount of fluffy hair, a square jaw, and a hideous purple shirt was dumping two garden gnomes (communications officer and the original Red Shirt) into his trash can, and then stood there, staring at the plastic container like it was a open grave.

Tony shoved his feet into a pair of slippers and hurried out the door, still in his pyjama pants (with flamingos on them, because Tony loved him some ridiculous pyjamas), coffee mug in one hand. “No, no, no, wait, what, what are you  _ doing _ ?”

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a rumpled copy of the same letter Tony had received and promptly ignored. His yard was neat and tidy. There wasn’t trash in it, he had his lawn cut regularly by the Parker kid down the street. The flower beds had actual flowers in them. He was fine.

“HOA says my gnomes are tacky,” Banner said. “They’re going to fine me.”

“There’s nothing in the HOA rules about lawn gnomes,” Tony said. “I checked. You’re fine. I like your lawn gnomes.”

“Well, someone doesn’t, because Whit said there were a number of complaints,” Banner said.

“Zero is a number,” Tony muttered. “Look, I’m on your side here-- my name’s Tony, by the way, nice to meet you--”

“Bruce.”

“--so let’s just go to the HOA meeting and appeal.”

Bruce gave him a little half-tipped up smile. “You think so?”

“I know so--” Tony reached into the trash and pulled out the two gnomes. Nothing seemed to be broken. A little paint on Red Shirt’s hat, good as new. “I like these guys-- I’ve… my lawn croc-- you know. It’s been fun.”

Bruce was smiling, a little shy, ducking his chin. But he was also nodding along. “Yeah, I-- it’s nice to meet you, Tony.”

***

“Bruce, Bruce, check it out,” Tony said. He waved the remote at his neighbor, noting again, for the record, that Bruce was absolutely adorable in an absent minded professor sort of way. Even if he insisted on wearing purple cardigans. He was, in fact, both absent-minded and a professor, so it was just professional courtesy that Tony was noticing, and the fact that he wanted to see if Bruce’s mouth was as kissable as it looked, that was just bonus, right?

Besides, no one had to know that he was crushing on his neighbor.

“What are you--” Bruce ducked as one of the flamingoes got a little close to his head.

“Flying lawn decorations,” Tony said. “They’re not against the rules, I  _ checked _ .”

Bruce spun around in a slow circle. There were an even dozen of the things, zooming around in patterns above Tony’s lawn. “This is amazing, did you  _ make _ these?”

“Well, yeah,” Tony sad. “I mean, they don’t even sell this sort of thing in skymall.”

“How?”

“Well, I started with some roombas, and then hacked their algorithms,” Tony said. “Built the core around them, and utilized some of Stark Industries old flying car tech. We never could get approval for the repulser technology, and Dad gave it up as a bad idea. The lift just wasn’t there for a passenger compartment. But these guys, they weigh less than ten pounds each, so it’s pretty easy. They’re confined to the yard, and when they need to recharge, they go right to their stations behind the house.”

“That’s cool,” Bruce said, tipping his head up to watch.

“Perfectly safe. Perfectly within the rules,” Tony said. After the emergency session in which the HOA had decided that  _ lawn statuary of any sort  _ was against the rules, and both Tony and Bruce had been hit with enormous fines (Tony had offered to cover Bruce’s fines, but Bruce had just blown him off) Tony had been trying, deliberately, to get on Frost’s nerves. “They’re not statues. And when they’re charging, they’re out of sight, and so not lowering the curb appeal.”

Bruce hummed thoughtfully, still watching one particular flamingo making patrols around Tony’s yard. “I think you underestimate Whitney Frost.”

“We shall see,” Tony said. He felt pretty good about it. Besides, the flamingos were pretty cool, no matter what.

***

“Hey, hey, Tony-- Tony will you wait up?” Bruce came shuffling down the sidewalk from the Clubhouse, after the Homeowners Association meeting.

“Yeah, what? Oh, oh, sorry, Bruce, that just makes me so angry, there was nothing specific in the bylaws about lawn ornaments, Frost just has a boner for making people do what she wants. She doesn’t want residents, she wants fucking clones.” Tony hitched in a breath, getting ready to go full on rant, but the look on Bruce’s face pulled him up short. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just have to work on not getting angry,” Bruce said. “I have poor impulse control when I’m angry, and after so many years, I’ve finally learned that toxic anger doesn’t help anyone.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Tony said. “Look, you want to go out and get a burger and a beer or something? I just-- did you see that, she just--”

“Railroaded the board into doing what she wants, I know. She’s done it before. There’s only three of them, and Parker Robbins does whatever she says, so-- no one wants to be on her bad side,” Bruce told him. “I could have told you that.”

Which was Bruce’s way of saying he  _ had  _ told Tony that. And that Tony hadn’t listened. Usually, Tony had discovered that a firm, no nonsense attitude, a big smile, and a reasonable argument worked.

Frost had, when confronted with the idea that lawn gnomes weren’t specifically forbidden by the bylaws, had gotten the other board members to  _ change the damn bylaws at the fucking meeting.  _

Bylaws took only a quorum vote of the board members to change, and didn’t have to have any sort of discussion or study before hand.

“If Frost wanted us to all have to grow orange crabgrass in our yards, she could just decide that?” Tony demanded of the air. “How is that-- that is too much power for someone to have. These are  _ our  _ homes.”

“You can only turn over a board decision with at least fifty percent of the owners showing up for a vote. No one can do that. Even when she decides to raise the homeowners’ dues, we can only get about thirty heads of household to show up to the damn meeting,” Bruce said. “A beer and burger date sounds great.” He slanted his eyes at Tony. 

“Is it a date? I mean, not that I have a problem-- I mean, I haven’t… did you--” Tony stammered.

“You’re adorable when you get all muddled up,” Bruce said. He was a big guy, but soft, somehow. Like a teddy bear. He put an arm around Tony’s shoulders and Tony just wanted to kick back, curl up, and stay safe there. “I’m saying, if you want it to be a date, I’m not adverse to the idea of dating.”

“It’s a date,” Tony said, firmly. “Absolutely.”

***

“What are you doing?”

“Finding a loophole,” Tony said. The home owners association documents were a huge, over 200 page, held together with a binder clip piece of bullshit that Tony had signed before getting the mortgage for his home.

He’d read through them, because he always read everything that he signed, no matter how tedious. But the addendum to the HOAdocs had not been included.

Which showed a gradual increase in the amount of power that had consolidated into the board.

“Is it working?”

“Actually, yes,” Tony said, looking up with a beatific grin. “How do you feel about some neighborhood involvement.”

“Huh?”

“Change the system from within,” Tony said. “Look, there are actually seven board positions--” Tony traced a line down the page. “And they’re filled entirely by volunteers.”

“Frost only has three people on--”

“I know. No one has volunteered in years. So it’s just Frost and her cronie, and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who’ve been on the board since the neighborhood was first build up,” Tony said. “There’s a sad lack of leadership these days. Frost controls the vote, because in the case of a tie, she gets to decide.”

“So--”

“I’m saying we volunteer, my darling,” Tony said, batting his eyelashes at his boyfriend.

“Us. Volunteer.”

“To be on the board,” Tony clarified. “That gives the board six votes total. And I already talked May Parker into it.” Parker had a kid, a nephew about four years old, and she’d gone up against Frost a few times too for things like  _ sidewalk chalk _ and Big Wheels bikes. Which made for seven votes total. 

“You think Jack or Stan will back anything we suggest?”

“I don’t know,” Tony admitted. “But what else can we do, aside from conform to Frost’s expectations. We can’t let her  _ win _ , Bruce.” 

“I wasn’t aware that this was a war,” Bruce pointed out, mildly.

“Look, the board positions are only open at the annual meeting. This meeting. So, if it doesn’t work out, we’re only doing it for a year. How bad can it be?”

“I’m quite positive we will regret this,” Bruce said.

“Oh, come on, Bruce, this is an excellent outlet for your anger issues, there’s something here to get angry about! Use your powers for good.”

Bruce pulled Tony into an embrace and kissed him several times until Tony relented and relaxed. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m always angry.”


End file.
